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For the whole semester, I’m working on a project that involves making and designing media!
Contents:
Pitch – Week 4
The First Project – Week 8
The Final Project – Week 9
Contextual Report – Week 13
Pitch – Week 4
I explain most of my DA idea here!
There’s an odd audio blip in there that I’m not sure how to fix without re-recording with a better mic. I am going to be using a USB mic for my future content, but I need to get a pop filter for the sake of my own sanity!
My DA is going to be a YouTube channel where I make videos detailing my process learning new things ie. 3D modeling with Blender, or HTML Coding/Web design! This is a style of content that I’ve seen a few YouTubers try, though a huge inspiration for me is DrawWithJazza (his channel!) who approaches pretty much any new medium with an enthusiastic, nonchalant attitude and a disregard for tutorials.
My idea is designed to be fun, engaging, and have a decent amount of longevity, so I hope it turns out well!
Week 8 – Reflections on a project that never was
In the weeks since I pitched my DA, it’s changed entirely. For the better, mind you- change is a great thing when you’re bashing your head against an immovable object. The process to get to my new project, which I’ll outline next week (the project not the process), is probably one of the more interesting things I’ve learned about design thinking this semester.
The (first) Pivot
Starting in week 6, I had my work cut out for me with my DA. The excitement had already worn off by the time I got to around Monday and the dread was setting in. I had to do all these steps with no idea where to start or what order to do them in.
The original idea was to make videos analysing artists’ work and trying to imitate their processes, but I hit a wall pretty quickly trying to come up with natural sounding ways to talk about my thoughts. I got to the point where I finally realised i didn’t have to justify why I was doing what I was as long as I had an explanation of what it was, and suddenly making art became my main focus again.
The Product
At this point, I was finally able to be making things.
I was reflecting on the work of Neytirix, an Australian digital artist I really admire who happens to use 3D models in some of her larger illustrations. My goal was to imitate this part of her process and implement it into my own, then comment on how it went for me and what I think it helps with in artmaking. Only thing is, I’d never used Blender (my chosen 3D software) before.
The final render (below) and 3D view (above) of my scene composition. There’s various errors but we ball. (Ferrier 2024)
My recording software and Blender itself were shockingly easy on my RAM, and I started with Blender Guru’s donut tutorial as all good 3D modelers do. My first went well, and I got to the 4th episode before I felt confident enough to start on my own composition.
This was.. rough to say the least. Not at all optimized and glitching everywhere, but it was functional for a reference! It was time to paint.
Below you can see the speedpaint of my process! Flash warning, it’s pretty sped up- It took me around 1.5 hours (not including time spent learning Blender) to finish.
This was my first time recording a drawing on my laptop, but I think it went pretty well! At this point I was quite confident, but after it I hit a wall. I couldn’t figure out what to say, and talking to my laptop for 1h+ every day to get the right take was mentally draining. I never ended up getting a good take, and at this point I was already a week past when I wanted to have uploaded my first video. To say morale was low would be an understatement.
What Went Wrong
Honestly I think my biggest weakness when it comes to content creation is the talking part. I can talk about things for hours when it’s to other people, but being on my own and not being able to incorporate others into my content in a timely manner, I was stuck with nowhere to go other than a complete restart.
I think if I had started my DA by setting up a Twitch channel and streaming my art, I would have been more successful. I have friends who stream, and I would be a lot more engaged and able to talk. Even still, I’m proud of what I did manage to do, and I have some new skills in 3D that I wouldn’t have had if I didn’t start this project! Even if it’s a setback, it’s one worth pursuing another time when I’m more ready.
Week 9 – Rethinking and Reimagining
In week 7, while I was struggling to record voiceovers for my video, I was working on resources for my piano students (for context, I’m a music tutor). I’d found that a lot of them needed extra help with remembering note lengths and rests, so I made a “cheat sheet” to give to each of them. Little did I know at the time, this would be what helped me finally figure out my Digital Artefact.
The Product (for the second time)
This was my first time making something for my students, so the cheat sheet I ended up with is far from perfect. However, it’s a really good prototype and a good example of what I was aiming for with resources for my students.
I forgot a few things on this one, mainly that I didn’t include rests (by far one of the harder things to memorise for them as they’re not often encountered in the book I use to teach).
Caption: The first prototype of my new DA idea. It has some issues. (Ferrier 2024)
It’s also very wordy, something that doesn’t help one of my students who I wasn’t aware can’t read yet. My main goals when continuing to make things for my kids was to improve accessibility and include all the necessary information. This did, however, prompt me to change my DA focus- now I could work in parallel with my job and reduce my workload a huge amount.
The Pivot II: Electric Boogaloo
The next thing I made was a deck of cards, this time to help one of my students keep burnout at arm’s length and stay engaged in music theory. They’re only simple, with a lot of problems, but after a few games of snap with him and another student, I immediately saw an improvement in attitude and enthusiasm. It was at that point that I decided to fully pivot to my cards, and make them into something I could use for all my students as a teaching tool.
Last Saturday (week 8) I had a gatho with some friends, and part of that hangout was spent playing various card games. I suggested a trial run of my Snap game, considering my friends are much more experienced in Music Theory than my students and games would run faster, and I learned a ton.
One of the main things was the ideal group size for a game. The one above started as one of three, but beforehand we’d played a round with 4 players and rarely got a snap. The ideal size is definitely 2-3 players, and I want to try to increase that so that it has utility for classroom use in large group settings.
Something that’s also been pointed out to me with every game played (4 so far) is that the cards are a little too transparent, a factor I hadn’t thought of at the time of making them.
I also had some suggestions from my friends and family, such as to make different decks for rhythm, pitch, etc. (from my friends) and to have a separate ruleset to turn it into a memory game (from my beloved mother). I also want to make sure that the decks are large enough that symbol-only games can be played, for the sake of students who would have trouble reading the text cards.
The Current Plan
Right now, I have a fairly solid idea of what I wanna do for my next prototype.
The main goal right now is to get 2 decks designed and printed, so that I can put them to the test over the school holidays and in the first week back at work. They’ll probably be finished during the mid-session break, since I have other assignments due soon and will have to dedicate more time to those and making sure my students are set for the 2 weeks they have off lessons.
If these go well, I might make intermediate decks as well, with more concepts and harder snaps.
Week 13 – The End?
Over this semester, it’s been non-stop lessons in why making things is hard. 114 in general was easy- the assignments were low-stakes, the freedom was basically infinite when it came to coming up with projects. That also meant, however, that the actual process of making media (ha) was a consistent challenge that took up a lot of my brain.
Thinking back on what I set out to do at the start of the semester, I was definitely setting myself up for failure. Like most members of my generation the YouTuber dream is there (in fact I’m hoping to stream on twitch as a hobby soonish), but the level of work and amount of learning I’d have to be doing wouldn’t have been sustainable. I struggle a lot with scope, and in my slides I referenced how much of a nightmare the idea of making YouTube videos inevitably was.
Luckily, however, I pivoted before it was too late and abandoned what I’d already done.
Part I: The Not Terrible Idea
By the time I reached the end of my first project, two things were abundantly clear:
1. I was terrible at making digital content
2. I didn’t have the time for a very making-heavy DA on top of what I needed to do for work.
I’d gotten stuck at the point of making my first prototype for my YouTube idea, a bit demoralizing but not the worst go I’ve had at something. I knew by this stage that it wasn’t going to work, though, so I had to pivot quickly to something that would have.
I’d been working on a “cheat sheet” for my music students while I thought, struggling to come up with ideas when I remembered: I don’t have to make this nearly as hard as I have been! (a running theme for me at this point).
I already had the empathise stage done, and a prototype right in front of me: I could design something to help my students!
I wasn’t a huge fan of the idea that I would keep making cheat sheets, though; my kids don’t learn so quickly they’d need a new one immediately and I didn’t want to overload them with 5 billion pieces of laminated paper. Instead, I started looking online for a game to play with them, something that would last a long time and take a while to get right. Eventually, I settled on Snap as something they’d know how to play and had been suggested by several lists (unfortunately at this point lost to my browsing history, o7 various middle aged women on the internet with generic ideas of music games).
Part II: Card making hell
I was expecting my first prototype to be a cakewalk, but BOY I was wrong.
The kids loved the game, and started asking to play it during lessons which I considered a win, especially for one of them who’d been quite burnt out at that time.
HOWEVER:
The making of the cards before that was AWFUL.
Here’s a list of technical problems I had with my first prototype:
- They took FOREVER to cut out, even just as rectangles. Paper is not fun to cut nor is accidentally wasting it because I forgot how word doc sizes work.
- The corners were SHARP, to the point I didn’t let my kids shuffle them.
- Laminating is just hard, and shockingly time consuming. At the time I was making this deck I only had limited days to make things thanks to classes and work getting in the way, so I’d spend a whole day’s work making cards before going and teaching for a few hours, then back to cards.
- The cards were ugly, less of a technical thing but I like making things look good, especially as a digital artist.
- The cards were see-through, as due to an oversight I didn’t put a backing on them.
I played a lot of test games, as shown in my entries above, and they went pretty smoothly. I re-learned how to play snap and taught it to my friends, and we figured out the ideal group size to be around 3. My 2 player games at work also went well, not shared for the sake of my students’ privacy.
Left: a screenshot of the word document used to make my initial prototype. (Ferrier 2024)
These went well despite the various problems I encountered while making them, so I set off to make a second prototype with new knowledge and a plan I threw together in Milanote to have something nice looking for the site.
Part III: Uncharted Territory
It’s at this point I come to the steps I haven’t shared on here just yet.
…and all the joys that come with end-of-semester assignments taking a lot of time to work on, especially when you have majority music classes and 2 performances to get ready for.
The amount of time I had to work on my cards shrank pretty quickly, even with the school holidays starting after week 10 and me having two weeks off work to put these together.
By the time I was able to get back into it though, I ran into even more issues:
- I was planning to use the cricut I have at home to cut the cards out, but I made all my cards individually and couldn’t separate them for cutting within a reasonable timeframe
- Rounded corners. enough said.
- The designing of my card backings, while helped by the concept images I’d generated with Canva’s AI, was shockingly difficult. Luckily a friend was staying over at the time so I had help with ideas.
- Rounded corners 2, electric boogaloo. (I had to cut them out after laminating.)
- Even with my mum’s help with cutting them out, it took SUBSTANTIALLY longer to do so. Something something hubris, something something still inexplicably not having more or less than 4 versions of each card.
- I made 4 of each type of card, increasing the workload but also somehow decreasing the number of snaps in games.
The cards this time were a lot smaller, and I ended up completing my first deck of cards with the Pitch deck (not pictured), one with the first 5 notes of both the left and right hand that my students have learned as well as treble and bass clefs.
I think the best decision made throughout the process has been to introduce blank cards, which can serve as an additional concept to learn if there’s something not in the existing set (ie. sharp or flat symbols).
Right: A screenshot of the word document used to print my second prototype. My foolish self didn’t click off the page. (Ferrier 2024)
These cards were a bit of a downgrade in some ways compared to my first prototype, at least in terms of actual gameplay. They fixed a lot of the initial problems I had, though, so that’s a good place to start.
Are these cards the final product I’ll make? No!
Are they 100% functional? Technically yes!
Am I happy with them? Absolutely!
This project didn’t end up needing a lot of research, but pages like Oodles of Music and Ashley Danyew’s lists of games to play with kids really helped me figure stuff out.
In the end I’ve gotten nothing but positive feedback for my project, particularly from my parents and students. As I was writing this my dad came up behind me and told me “I really like what you’ve done with that. It’s sick”, and both of my piano students today asked to play snap with me after practicing for most of the lesson. I’m proud of what I’ve made, even if it was design hell to get there.
Part IV: The Final Product
Below: First prototype Document. Printed 2x.
(Ferrier 2024)
My project is physical media so it’s difficult to hand in with any kind of substantiation. Because of this, I’ll hand in the document for my second prototype alongside the link to this site.